When Rachel and I first spoke in the spring of this year about hanging her paintings at Press, she was working in Advertising Sales at KCRG TV9, although Director of Fun & Happiness is what was listed on the card she gave me. Since then, she moved on from nearly ten years in television to become the Director of Affiliate Relations at Syncbak, a live-streaming company based in Marion.

As a self-proclaimed list-maker with a degree in advertising from Iowa State, both of these jobs make sense for Rachel. What you wouldn’t see on a transcript would be her love for art which blossomed as a child and grew over time to become her passion as a creative outlet.

Rachel’s abstract painting style is full of texture and comes across free-flowing in a color palette ranging from vibrant blues and purples to burning oranges and reds. Some pieces are very layered and saturated in color, others are washed in white with subtle pops of color poking through. While there doesn’t appear to be any intentional realism on the canvas, her work inspires many people to see objects or landscapes within the paint.

Having attended a wine and paint event with a friend, Rachel confesses she was definitely not made to color within the lines. She would rather leave structure and organization at the office and make her time at the canvas a stress-free zone. Even with her custom pieces, she likes to start with a general idea and let the paint lead the way. With layers building upon layers, she claims there are no mistakes, a way of painting inspired by her Uncle Lynn Montague who taught art at Waverly High school for over thirty years. Rachel learned much from watching his painting evolve over the years, and welcomes his advice and feedback as she progresses with her own craft.

Rachel describes her art as expressions of how she is feeling at the moment, a freeing experience that lets her creativity flow unfiltered. Within her day job, she has found ways of injecting a sense of that by writing scripts for clients when she worked at KCRG or helping bring new content and programming to Syncbak. Working with a product that is still so new and ever-evolving, she is encouraged to think outside the box.

Despite working in advertising, Rachel says that her first painting sale was a complete accident, a testament to the authenticity of her art. Now selling off her paintings not only frees up space in her house, but Rachel loves seeing the joy her work brings to the people receiving it.

Art is oftentimes treated as a reflection of the person who created it. You could say that Andy Warhol‘s pop art was a result of his obsession with celebrity culture or that Jackson Pollack‘s expressive paint pouring illustrated his volatile personality but creation can come about for a multitude of reasons. While prying into Rachel’s life as an artist, I now see her flowing swaths of color as complementary to the more rigid structure of her professional life. A pure, artistic release outside of the nine to five that pays the bills.

See more of Rachel’s work at The Early Bird coffee shop in Cedar Rapids (in the former Smuelekoff’s building) or come January, take a stroll through the Pappajohn Biomedical Institute at the University of Iowa. Installing her paintings there on the 18th, she’ll have an open house at the end of the month and will be displayed until mid-March. Find her on Facebook as Rachel Elisabeth Paintings to purchase one for yourself or order a custom piece to fit your home.

Interested in showing your art at Press Coffee? Stop by or e-mail lisa@presscoffeeco.com